Analytic Perspectives on 'The Hunger Games'

Source: Anthony Tobia, MD

Introduction

At our medical school, the Office of Multicultural Affairs hosts an annual Summer Science Scholars Academy (S3A) where participating high school students are provided a three-week introduction to a career in medicine. The curriculum focuses on exploring the human body through a series of lectures, laboratories, and clinical experiences. Every year, S3A holds a half-day media event where teaching faculty from the Department of Psychiatry provide film analysis to introduce students to aspects of psychiatry and psychology. This blog is a summary of the S3A student-initiated discussion prompted by our watching this year’s featured film: The Hunger Games (2012). WARNING: This post includes spoilers.

Synopsis

The Hunger Games (2012) is the first adaptation of a trilogy that follows Katniss (Kat) Everdeen in Panem, a dystopia run by President Snow. Collins’s fusion of Richard Bachman’s The Running Man (1987) and Battle Royale (2000) depicts a lottery where one boy and one girl from each of 12 districts are selected to compete in an annual “pageant” as punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol. As of this posting, the film holds an 84 percent Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.2 rating (out of 10) on IMDb.

What It Has to Do With Psychiatry

The Low-Hanging Fruit

During the pageant, Kat has a nightmare during the "tracker jackers scene" that discloses prior trauma of her father’s premature death in a coal mining accident. She also demonstrates a restricted range of affect that, taken together, should prompt the clinician to investigate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When drawing on film to review aspects of psychiatry, one actively looks for additional clues to support the provisional diagnosis. When actively watching The Hunger Games “through the psychiatrist’s lens,” three things are discovered that support the film as a fictional case study of PTSD. What’s interesting is that these three qualities lend to Kat’s survival, while in a clinical vacuum, they are likely to be regarded as symptoms of a mental disorder.

First, Kat’s hypervigilance serves her adaptively throughout the pageant. Second, her strategy at the start of the pageant is a metaphor, if not manifestation, of avoidance behavior. Third, the author highlights the 80 percent increase in suicide risk among people with PTSD (1) to reveal Kat’s strategy of escape and ultimate defiance at the end of the movie.

Similar to Kat, Primrose (Prim) demonstrates signs of PTSD (dissociation) during the film. Interestingly, the primrose (flower) is indigenous to western and southern Europe, linking the character to Greece and therefore our next section.

The Tantalizing Low-Hanging Fruit

Tantalus was a titan once welcomed to Zeus’ table, until he stole ambrosia and nectar and revealed the secrets of Mount Olympus. Tantalus then offered up his son as a sacrifice, cutting Pelops up and serving him to the gods.

For his act, Tantalus was to stand for eternity in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches. Whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches raised his intended meal from just beyond his grasp. Whenever he bent down to get a drink, the water receded before he could get any to hold to his parched lips. There are three aspects of this Greek myth that are pertinent to understanding The Hunger Games.

First, Tantalus stealing the food of the gods parallels the Dark Days of the Capitol when the rebellion threatened the secrets of those in power.

Second, as punishment for their transgressions, the Capitol serves up children to appease “their Zeus,” President Snow, just as Tantalus served up Pelops as a sacrifice. In this way, the filicide committed by Tantalus parallels the nanny state sacrificing two children from the 12 districts to compete in the annual Hunger Games.

Thirdly, the tropes shared by Greek mythology and The Hunger Games prompt a discussion of additional links to as well as the psychiatry behind four selected Greek myths.

Theseus and the Minotaur

The pageant is a trope that dates back to ancient Greek myth: an annual feast where a virgin is sacrificed to appease the gods. The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is originally set in Athens where Androgeus, son of King Minos, was killed in the Panathenaic Games (Collins’s dystopia is named Panem). Minos then demanded that the King of Athens send 24 seven men and women every year to be sacrificed to the Minotaur as retribution for his son’s death (2). In the third year, Theseus, son of Aegeus, pledged, “We cannot sacrifice any more of our young citizens to this tyrant. When it is time to send the next tribute, I will go as one of them…” (3).

The tribute parade is analogous to the feast of Minos right down to District 12’s fire symbolizing the torch of the original Olympiad (i.e., Panathenaic Games).

The External Locus of Kronos

The Hunger Games’ pageant includes a cornucopia of ammunition that’s a reference to the Greek goat’s horn which the infant Zeus used to drink from. Greek legend (4) states that Zeus had to be hidden in a cave so that his father, Kronos, didn’t eat him. There, he was nurtured by a goat and weaned on the cornucopia.

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In fear of a prophecy that he would be overthrown by his own son, Kronos swallowed each of his children as they were born. His wife, Rhea, managed to save the youngest, Zeus, by hiding him away in a cave on the island of Crete (5).

The above prophecy establishes an external locus of control that influences Kronos’s behavior. Ancient Greeks often attributed human characteristics to the deities, whether it be Hera’s jealousy, Athena’s bravery, or Aphrodite’s vanity. Kronos’s paranoia that one of his children would fulfill the prophecy led to his maladaptive behavior and eventual downfall.

In subsequent myths, the cornucopia is filled with fruits and grains and is most frequently associated with the goddess of the harvest, Demeter; the grieving mother of Persephone.

The Abduction of Persephone: Seasonal Affective Disorder

According to Greek myth, Hades, the god of the underworld, fell in love with the beautiful Persephone when he saw her picking flowers one day in a meadow. The god then carried her off in his chariot to live with him in the underworld (6). Persephone’s mother, Demeter, begged Hades to allow her daughter to return to her. When he didn’t acquiesce, a dysphoric Demeter lost interest in the harvest and all living things on Earth began to die. The gods of Olympus intervened and forced Hades to return Persephone home.

When Persephone Prim is taken away from her, Kat warns, “Don’t take any extra food from them…” Similar to the dialogue between the two sisters, Persephone was persuaded to eat four seeds of a pomegranate while in the underworld. In Greek tradition, to eat the fruit of one’s captor meant that she would have to return to captivity. Despite being allowed to leave, Persephone was therefore doomed to return to the underworld for four months of the year (7). Each year when the time comes for Persephone to return to the underworld, Demeter grieves, and the Earth becomes cold and barren again until her reemergence months later.

The myth of Persephone and Demeter helped Ancient Greeks explain the change of seasons. It also is one of the earliest descriptions of Major Depressive Disorder with Seasonal Pattern (Seasonal Affective Disorder). The prevalence of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in community samples ranges from 2–10 percent. The defining characteristic is depressive episodes that occur in the fall-winter (at least two occurring during consecutive winters) that alternate with euthymic episodes during spring and summer (DSM-5).

First-line treatment of SAD is bright light (10,000 lux) therapy (BLT), with a reported response rate of 40 percent (severe SAD) to 67 percent (mild SAD) (8). Treatment usually includes exposure to BLT for 30 minutes at a therapeutic distance of 60–80 cm (from the lightbox) each morning.

Pandora’s Box: The Role of Hope in Psychiatry

After Kat and Peeta do their best Romeo and Juliette impression, and Crane begrudgingly declares the two winners, Snow whispers to Kat, “Why do you think we have a winner? Hope.” Haymitch warns Kat that she has made enemies as a result of her behavior. Her act of defiance has exposed the weak underbelly of the Capitol, opening up a proverbial Pandora’s Box for those in power.

Zeus created Pandora and offered her in marriage to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus. As a wedding present, Zeus gave Pandora a box, but warned her never to open it. Unable to resist temptation, Pandora opened the box allowing all of life’s miseries to escape (9). By the time Pandora slammed the lid of the box back shut, the only thing left inside was hope.

The role of hope for the psychiatrist and psychologist lies, among other things, in Erik Erikson’s theory of personality development. Erikson was an ego psychologist who proposed a psychosocial stage theory of personality development throughout the lifecycle.

Each stage in Erikson’s theory builds on the preceding stage(s) and, through the resolution of a core conflict, paves the way for subsequent stages of development. For example, "trust vs. mistrust" is the first stage in Erikson’s theory. Success in this stage (0-18 months) leads to the virtue of hope. By developing a sense of trust, the infant can have hope that as new crises arise, there is a possibility that other people will always be there as a source of support. For example, Haymitch advises Kat that sponsors who support her may be the difference between life and death.

Conclusions

Popular films such as The Hunger Games serve as great opportunities to discuss and review topics germane to the field of psychiatry, such as social learning theory, Seasonal Affective Disorder, and personality development. Tropes from archetypal stories such as Greek myth are replayed in modern popular culture (e.g., films) to provide an audience with prosocial warnings that maintain a cultural normal. As this expands across all media, click here for an interesting discussion about the internet that combines two Greek references from above—the cornucopia and Pandora’s box.